Zero History

lobby.
Outside, the air had been scrubbed by rain, pavements glittering. Ten to eight, by her
iPhone. She could, as either George or Meredith had said, see Les Éditeurs across the
way, not this street but the next one over, angled. She walked right, past the fancy little
drugstore, then right again, not wanting to be early. This much narrower street, angling
sharply back, behind the hotel, was home to an English-language secondhand bookshop,
a cocktail bar, a serious-looking sushi restaurant, a bookbinder, and a place that seemed
to specialize in Chinese reflexology equipment: sadistic-looking massage devices,
instruction manuals, models of bodies and body parts marked with meridians and
pressure points. Here, for instance, was a very large china ear, apparently identical to the
one in Heidi’s room at Cabinet. She’d known she’d seen one before.
She turned, walked back to the bookbinder’s smaller window. Wondered about its
clientele. Who paid whatever this cost, to have old books rebound, to this high a standard
of workmanship, exquisite cobbling for ancient thoughts? Bigend might, she supposed,
though any bibliophile tendencies of his were well concealed. She’d yet to see a book in
any Bigendian environment. He was a creature of screens, of bare expanses of desk or
table, empty shelves. He owned, as far as she knew, no art. In some way, she suspected,
he regarded it as competition, noise to his signal.
One of the books in the window was shaped like a fan, or like a wedge of giltembossed
ivory calfskin pie, the apex bitten neatly, concavely off.
The street was completely deserted. She said a silent prayer for Garreth. To what, she
didn’t know. Unreliable universe. Or those machineries upon which he painted. Please.
The book-fan regarded her smugly, immaculate, its contents unread perhaps for
centuries.
She turned and walked toward Odéon. Crossed it, continuing on toward the restaurant.
Outside of which, some residual celebrity-sense now told her, were paparazzi. She
blinked, kept walking. Yes, there were. She knew the body language, that nervy-butnegligent
pretending-not-to-care. A sort of rage, born of boredom, waiting. Untouched
drinks on the red tablecloths, whatever was cheapest. Phones to ears. A few with
sunglasses. They watched her approach.
Instinctively, she waited for the first one to raise a camera. For the sound of machinedriven
image-collection. Tightening the muscles in her pelvic floor. Prepared either to flee
or look her best.
Yet no one shot her. Though they watched as she came on. She was not the target. Had
not been, for years. But temporarily a person of interest now, by virtue of turning up
here. Why?
Inside, Les Éditeurs was Deco, but not the chrome and faux-onyx kind. Red leather, the
color of Fifties fingernails, midbrown varnished wood, books-by-the-yard, framed blackand-white
portraits of French faces she didn’t recognize.
“He didn’t need to send you,” said Rausch, her onetime editor on Bigend’s nonexistent